Red Templar (8 page)

БA

And so did the second, but with one small change:

JVA

“I don’t get it,” said Holliday.

“By the 1880s Fabergé was the imperial court jeweler. It was one of the functions for the Hermitage to document and photograph each of the Fabergé eggs given to the empress by the czar. The first black-and-white transparency shows the base of the Kremlin Egg, also known as the Uspenski Cathedral Egg, made by Fabergé in 1903, although it wasn’t given to Alexandra until 1906, for a variety of reasons. The bottom was covered with felt so it wouldn’t scratch delicate surfaces. The master goldsmith in charge of the Kremlin Egg was Johan Victor Aarne, a Finn who worked in the Fabergé shop in St. Petersburg from 1891 to 1904, when he returned to Finland. The Cyrillic hallmark ‘
’ is his signature, the punch for making it his alone to use.” Genrikhovich paused. “Three months ago some of the Kremlin treasures were taken out of the collection for repairs and for cleaning. Included among them was the Kremlin Egg; the clockwork mechanisms had become clogged with dust and dirt over the decades, and several of the larger jewels had become loose in their settings.

“Since the Hermitage has the largest and best conservation unit in the Federation, the items were sent here. As chief archivist I was responsible for the documentation of the treasures as they came into the Hermitage, and our photographers took a series of comprehensive detailed exposures of each and every item. The second transparency of the Kremlin Egg was taken at that time.”

“Different marks on the base,” said Holliday.

“Precisely. The JVA mark from the second transparency is also that of Johan Victor Aarne, but it was not used by him until his return to Vyborg, Finland, in 1904. He used the mark between that date and his death in 1934.”

“So sometime in that thirty-year period he made a perfect copy of the egg.”

“Yes,” said Genrikhovich. “The one on display in the Kremlin Armoury is a fake.”

13

The big black ZiL 114 limousine and its front and rear guard of Mercedes G55 four-by-fours sped across the granite cobblestones of Red Square, scattering the small crowds of tourists as it raced towards Spasskaya Gate, the official entrance to the Kremlin.

The thin, partially bald man brooding in the deep leather seat of the passenger compartment looked more like an accountant than the director of the FSB, the feared secret police agency that held sway over the Russian people, but Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov liked his unassuming look. Especially the glasses Vladimir had suggested. Bortnikov had nearly perfect vision, but he liked the studious, professorial aspect his oversize spectacles gave him.

The limousine slipped through the broad opening beneath the tower, breaching the ancient fortress with amazing ease. Ivan the Terrible would have spun in his grave. Bortnikov smiled thinly. What was it poet Mikhail Lermontov had said about this place—“the legendary phoenix raised out of the ashes”? If only he knew how appropriate those words were.

As the wall in Berlin had crumbled, so had great Russia’s hopes for the future. Now, with his old friend Vladimir putting the iron back into the Rodina’s soul, there was hope once again . . . and it was the Phoenix that would give Russia that chance at restoring her greatness.

The limousine slowed somewhat as it came through the opening in the massive wall and rolled ponderously past the old Supreme Soviet Building. It threaded its way through the maze of buildings until it finally reached the courtyard of the old State Kremlin Palace, once the home of the czars when they were in Moscow.

Vladimir kept his official prime minister’s office in the Russian White House, the modern, Stalinist-era building that was home to Parliament. But he was never one to cut himself off from the real seat of power and maintained his real and private office in a suite of rooms that had once been the apartment of one of the Romanov princes.

The limousine stopped at an entrance at the rear of the building, and Bortnikov waited while Tolya, his chauffeur and sometime bodyguard, opened the door for him. He climbed out of the leather seat and stood briefly in the cool late-afternoon sunshine. He nodded to Tolya, told him to go and get himself a cup of coffee somewhere, and entered the building.

He climbed two flights of narrow stone stairs and continued down a long, ornate hallway, the ceiling arched and covered in gilded cherubim and angels. The walls of the corridor were bright blue watered moiré silk, and every few feet there were marble busts depicting an assortment of green gods and goddesses. He reached an arched white door at the end of the hallway, opened it and stepped inside.

Beyond the door was a large vestibule with an ornate gilded desk on the left and a guard seated behind it in full, red-breasted Kremlin guard uniform, complete with the huge Pinochet-style peaked cap and shiny cavalry boots. As Bortnikov stepped into the room the young man snapped to attention, heels clicking, white-gloved hand snapping to the peak of his idiotic cap, his eyes unblinking. The FSB director smiled pleasantly.

The boy was smooth cheeked and very handsome, just his type. There was sweat forming on the young fellow’s forehead. Power was a wonderful thing. Bortnikov gave him a little nod, then crossed the vestibule to a set of double doors. He opened the one on the right and stepped into the sitting room of Vladimir Putin’s private office.

There was no desk, only chairs and tables and glittering blue stone “Imperial Porphyry” columns. The tall windows were covered in bloodred velvet fringed with gold. The chairs were gilt and red upholstery in the Louis Quinze style, the carpets covered with rich “tree of life” patterns from Azerbaijan. The tables by each chair were chased silver and crystal, and the central coffee table the chairs surrounded was a circular slab of inlaid marble held up on curved gold legs with lion’s-paw feet. On the coffee table was a solid-gold platter holding three sweating bottles of red-labeled Istok vodka, a dozen green-and-gold bottles of Baltika 9 beer and the appropriate glassware.

Three of the four chairs around the table were already occupied. To Bortnikov’s left was the balding, narrow-faced Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, prime minister of all the Russias. Directly in front of the FSB director was Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the diminutive, boyish-looking Russian president and Putin’s successor in the job. The gray-bearded older man on the right, wearing a very expensive pin-striped suit from Bond Street instead of his ornate robes, was Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, known during his days in the old KGB by his code name “Mikhailov” and otherwise known as Kirill I, patriarch of Moscow and all Rus, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church—effectively its pope and, by the numbers, the most powerful of all the Orthodox patriarchs.

Gundyaev was the oldest of the four by a few years, but all of the men were in their late middle age. Friends since boyhood, all four had been in the Leningrad Oblast KGB during the same period.

Bortnikov turned and closed the door firmly behind him. He turned back to his companions, a hand raised in greeting, then sat down in the fourth chair. Putin stood, went to the coffee table and poured out four generous shots of vodka into the crystal old-fashioned glasses. The other three men stood and Putin passed the drinks around.
“Podnaseets Kloob Leningradski!”
toasted the prime minister.
To the Leningrad Club.

“Kloob Leningradski!”
the other three responded.

“Daneezoo!”
Bottoms up,
Putin ordered. All four downed their drinks in a single swallow. Putin, the host, refilled them, and the four old friends sat down again.

“Perhaps we should sing patriotic songs,” said the gray-bearded Gundyaev. He began to sing the moody, solemn chorus of
“Gosudarstvenniy Gimn SSSR,”
the anthem of the Soviet Union, in his strong, baritone voice:

Slav’sya, Otechestvo nashe

svobodnoye,Druzhby narodov nadyozhny oplot!

Partiya Lenina—sila narodnaya

Nas k torzhestvu kommunizma vedyot!

Glory to the Fatherland, united and free!

The stronghold of the friendship of the people!

The party of Lenin, power of the people,

It leads us to the triumph of Communism!

“I really don’t think that will be necessary, Vladimir Mikhailovich.” Putin laughed. “Singing such a song outside this office might get you into terrible trouble with the proletariat.”

“But it is such a nice song,” complained the primate. He’d obviously been drinking before Bortnikov got there. “It has gravity, strength, power. Not like that rude stuff you hear in the streets now.” The head of the Russian Orthodox Church launched into a reasonably good imitation of a beat-box song called “Black Boomer” by Seryoga.

“You seem to know the words quite well, Your Holiness,” said Putin.

“I hear it when I go to the radio station for my Sunday sermon to the people. It distresses me.”

“What on earth is a ‘black boomer,’ I wonder?” Medvedev asked, sipping from his glass.

Putin shrugged. “According to my daughter Yekaterina, black boomer refers to the pistol the man is carrying—a black boomer. On the other hand, my daughter Maria says the ‘black boomer’ in question is the young man’s vehicle, a black BMW. I tend to agree with Maria.”

“Perhaps we should get down to business,” said Bortnikov, putting his half-filled glass down on the side table beside his chair.

“Ah, yes.” Putin nodded. “What have you to tell us, my dear Alexander Vasilyevich?”

“The American we were told about and his Cuban companion crossed the Turkish border and went with an unidentified third man to the monastery of Saint Simeon the Plowman at Ahtopol in Bulgaria.”

“The place Beria went to in 1945.” His Holiness nodded. “And where he retrieved the secret sword.”

“Which told us nothing,” said Putin. “Only gave us more riddles to solve.”

“At any rate they went there and were observed by several CSS thugs.”

“They were followed?”

“Of course.”

“By the Bulgarian State Security people?” Putin asked.

“No, by our men.”

“And?”

“They were killed.”

“The American and his friends?” Medvedev asked nervously. “They killed an American?”

“No,” said Bortnikov, blood coming into his face, not from embarrassment but from rage. He reminded himself about his doctor’s warnings concerning his blood pressure and lit a cigarette to calm himself down. “Our people,” he said after a moment, drawing on the cigarette. He took a swallow of vodka. “All of them.”

“This American has . . . how do you say it in English . . . skills?” Putin said. He’d been working hard to improve his English for the past two or three years and was now reasonably fluent. His daughters were always teaching him little colloquialisms.

“I would say he has excellent skills,” said His Holiness, raising an eyebrow.

“Where are they now?”

“We lost track of them for a while and then they showed up in Odessa. He visited a document thief and was provided with everything he needed.”

“You know the names they are traveling under now?”

“Not yet, but there are not many Americans in Russia at this time of year. Somewhere along the line he will have been required to show his identification. We know he did not enter Russia through any known airport or train station, so in the end it will simply be a process of elimination.”

“How long?” Putin asked.

“A matter of days. Maybe less.”

“We don’t want them harmed,” cautioned His Holiness, pouring himself a foaming glass of the potent Russian beer. “You have a tendency to be overzealous in your actions.” He paused. “And perhaps your people are not as good as you have boasted on more than one occasion. You are not a street policeman anymore, Alexander Vasilyevich.” The primate’s tone was chiding, and the FSB director bristled.

“No, Your Holiness, and neither are you a parish priest taking the confessions of your people and then passing them on to Vladimir Vladimirovich anymore,” replied Bortnikov, glancing at Putin. He turned back to the primate. “I leave the running of the Church to you,
Preeyatyel Papa.
You leave the running of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki and the FSB to me.”

“We should stop arguing like children in the schoolyard,” said Putin. “This is about neither the Church nor the Foreign Intelligence Service, nor the FSB. It is about the four of us in this room and our great duty, and it is about the Order of the Phoenix. Most important, it is about Russia, our motherland, the Rodina and her future. Remember that.”

Bortnikov’s cell phone chirped loudly. He slipped it out of his breast pocket, thumbed it on and held it to his ear. His face brightened as he listened. Finally he ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket.

“They have discovered who the third man accompanying Holliday and the Cuban is. His name is Victor Nikolaevich Genrikhovich, and he is a curator of documents at the Hermitage.”

“Dear God,” whispered Medvedev, the president. “We could be ruined.”

“Don’t worry,” said Bortnikov. “He is being arrested as we speak.”